It seems that Codex changed behaviour in VScode just 1 or 2 days ago. After a lot of troubleshooting together with Codex it seems that this renders Codex useless if using it in Dev Containers.
I am coding in a VScode Dev Container. Host is macOS 26, the Linux Dev Container holds a “mirror” of server side tools. The developed code should run on server side eventually, but development is more isolated and faster on local macOS.
At the beginning I prompted Codex where to do work on code and do git operations - inside or outside the container. Should be inside. Hence some tools needed for e.g. pre-commit hooks are only installed inside the container, to on macOS. That way I can’t even commit from macOS, I have to be inside the container.
Then I prompted for a configuration, where Codex will reopen itself inside the container, whenever I do „Reopen in Dev Container“ in VScode. This way Codex sees the working directory path inside the container‘s sandbox (workspace/) and could modify files from inside the container for me. Of cause the repo / working directory on macOS is different, not /workspace/.
I have been happily opening the folder in VScode on macOS, doing a “Reopen in Container” in VScode, interacting with Codex extension in VScode, which suggested code snippets or whole files and automatically (after a click on “Approve in Codex extension) edited files under /workspace/
This stopped (yesterday, if I should tell). Now Codex is always running on the host side and hence does not find the working dir‘s path (as seen from inside the container) and on the other side requires privilege escalation to modify files on the host path from inside the Dev Container.
I tried to troubleshoot this with Codex itself but this only lead to frustration as Codex suggesting non-working or non-practical workarounds, like creating directories in the root folder (/) of macOS. Even following these has not lead to a working setup again.
Since I am not going to copy and paste Codex suggestions by hand and am not willing to do everything at the host level, this renders Codex now useless. Also I am absolutely clueless what caused this.
Has anyone experienced this too?